Breaking News

This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in each source note. Quotation marks are not used.

---

• 
• SOURCE: Baltimore Sun
  7/15/2020
  

  University of Texas won’t Drop Song with Racist History as Players Requested

  University of Texas athletes had demanded that the university cease to use the song, which has roots in racist minstrelsy and the words of Robert E. Lee, as an anthem. 

• 
• SOURCE: WTOP
  7/13/2020
  

  Where Did The Term ‘Redskins’ Come From?

  Monday’s announcement that the D.C. region’s football team would be abandoning the Redskins brand marks the end of a decadeslong push to shift the team away from the historically racist and oppressive term.

• 
• SOURCE: NPR
  7/11/2020
  

  Hamilton, In Fiction And History, Is Key To Understanding The Electoral College

  This week, the U.S. Supreme Court settled an important question about the function of the Electoral College that elects the U.S. president. But it did not address the pivotal question about the Electoral College.

• 
• SOURCE: TIME
  7/13/2020
  

  A History of the Newly Resurgent 'Black National Anthem'

  The influence of "Lift Every Voice and Sing" on Black culture over more than a century has been immeasurable.

• 
• SOURCE: Eater
  7/10/2020
  

  ‘If You Want to Experience Liberation, Black Women Must Be at the Table’

  From the Montgomery bus boycott to the Black Lives Matter movement, Black women have made food a central part of protest.

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  7/13/2020
  

  A Century After a Race Massacre, Tulsa Finally Digs for Suspected Mass Graves

  The excavation at Oaklawn Cemetery, delayed for months by the pandemic, begins Monday morning.

• 
• SOURCE: CNN
  7/12/2020
  

  Historians Will Likely Rank Trump as One of the Worst Presidents

  If Trump goes on to lose in November, he doesn't just need to worry about losing to Biden. Trump needs to worry about the fact that the history books are probably going to put him down as a below average president, if not one of the worst.

• 
• SOURCE: The Morning Call
  7/9/2020
  

  Black Lives Matter Movement Prods Bethlehem and Other Districts to Review How History is Taught

  Last weekend, protestors in Allentown, PA demanded that the school district mandate a Black history curriculum.

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  7/9/2020
  

  During the Civil War, the Enslaved Were Given an Especially Odious Job. The Pay Went to Their Owners.

  The National Archives has made available online a trove of almost 6,000 Confederate government payroll records that account for money issued to hundreds of owners and others for the work of the enslaved.

• 
• SOURCE: The New York Times
  7/10/2020
  

  Riots Long Ago, Luxury Living Today

  High-end development has transformed some Black neighborhoods decades after they were scarred by unrest. And not by coincidence.

• 
• SOURCE: Smithsonian Magazine
  7/8/2020
  

  Native Americans and Polynesians Met Around 1200 A.D.

  Genetic analysis of their modern descendants shows that people from the Pacific Islands and South America interacted long before Europeans arrived.

• 
• SOURCE: The New York Times
  7/9/2020
  

  Campaign Urges NASA to Rename the John C. Stennis Space Center

  The center, in Mississippi, is named for a former senator who opposed civil rights legislation and the Supreme Court ruling that desegregated the nation’s public schools.

• 
• SOURCE: FiveThirtyEight
  7/8/2020
  

  Confederate Statues Were Never Really About Preserving History

  These monuments were installed as symbols of white supremacy during periods of U.S. history when Black Americans’ civil rights were aggressively under attack.

• 
• SOURCE: The Intercept
  7/4/2020
  

  Carl Reiner’s Life Should Remind Us: If You Like Laughing, Thank FDR And The New Deal

  Reiner’s brother saw a small ad in the New York Daily News about free acting lessons being offered in lower Manhattan by the Works Progress Administration. Reiner had never contemplated acting before in his life, but his brother insisted, so he went.

• 
• SOURCE: The New York Times
  7/4/2020
  

  A Teacher Held a Famous Racism Exercise in 1968. She’s Still at It.

  The day after Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, Jane Elliott carried out the “Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes” exercise in her classroom. Now, people are returning to her work.

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  7/3/2020
  

  A Brief History of The Word ‘Redskin’ And How It Became a Source of Controversy

  Its origins extend back to the 18th century, long before it became the name of a football team.

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  7/7/2020
  

  Just How Little U.S. Students Learn About African American History — And Five Steps to Start to Change That

  Leslie T. Fenwick and Chike Akua discuss anti-racist curriculums and provide five ways that K-12 and higher education administrators, teachers and students can begin to educate themselves on this subject.

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  7/6/2020
  

  Calling Racism A ‘Leftist Lie,’ White Vandals Target California Black Lives Matter Slogan

  “More than it being defaced, I was really personally disgusted with what I heard from the people who did this,” said a resident of Martinez, California.

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  7/6/2020
  

  Frederick Douglass Statue Torn Down in Rochester, N.Y., on Anniversary of His Famous Fourth of July Speech

  In 1852, Douglass asked the city’s residents and the country: ‘What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July?’

• 
• SOURCE: Bloomberg CityLab
  7/7/2020
  

  A New Data Analysis Can Answer the Question "Do I Live in the Suburbs?"

  The U.S. hasn’t had a formal definition for what constitutes a suburb. A new data analysis comes closer to defining America’s most popular neighborhood type.